The real issue regarding Lehman....Merrill is their antiquated business models.....

Electronic direct access trading should be run by firms such as BATS......just matches names to prices....

Investment Banking....is being run out of the country by US legal largesse which comes in different forms....One being the incestual SEC/Corporate relationship......The SEC is just a stepping stone to a real paying Wall Street job......

Indexing vastly outperforms active management found in brokerages....

The internet serves information better than individuals.....

The firms are basically busted....and just like anyone else...have no real worth.....caused by overleveraging bad assets for which they were supposedly sophisticated investors as they created them.....